


Twin Peaks Character Anthology

by gumboy



Category: Twin Peaks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 04:44:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5483912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gumboy/pseuds/gumboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as a "treat" for Yuletide 2015 for laughing academy</p><p>These are four separate little stories about Laura Palmer, Maddy Ferguson, Josie Packard and the ever wonderful Diane which take place before, during and after Twin Peaks. There are mentions of character death and drug use in the stories but no graphic descriptions.</p><p>However I goofed and mis-read her request and wrote a story for Laura Palmer instead of Sarah Palmer. Oops. Two out of three ain't bad right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Diane

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughingacademy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingacademy/gifts).



"Oh, Diane... I almost forgot. I got to find out what kind of trees these are. They're really something."

Diane snapped her gum and blew a bubble as the words registered in her mind and and then were immediately transferred into motion. Her fingers tapped away the letters forming the words of Dale Cooper stream of consciousness into the digital world of word processors and eventually printed paper.

She had long gotten used to Agent Cooper's rambling and strange methods. She wasn't specifically Agent Cooper's assistant. She supported an entire department, usually dealing with transfer of files, expense reports, case notes, etc. However Agent Cooper was different. And because he got results, his somewhat kooky methods were supported and so Diane was assigned to transcribing all of his field notes.

"HE'S A CRACKERJACK OF AN AGENT, DIANE!" Gordon Cole would say. "AND IF HE NEEDS YOU TO DO THIS, BY GOLLY, I THINK WE SHOULD HELP HIM OUT!"

She didn't mind it really. In fact she looked forward to when he was on the road. Every day there would be a FedEx package waiting for her like a small gift. Sometimes the tapes would just be Dale, rambling on and on about his lunch, his mileage and other times- 

"Diane, I'm at the Twin Peaks county morgue with the body of the Victim... What's her name? ... Laura Palmer. Diane, it's the same thing. I told you I had a feeling we'd see this again."

If there was ever a sense of dread to her job, it was moments like these. When a young girl's body washed up on the shore was violated somehow. She wished she could say it didn't affect her.

"Ring finger, under the nail. Let's see what he left us."

It always started that way. His excitement causing tension for her and the creeping in of fear in her mind. That such horrors out there existed.

"It's an 'R'. Diane, give this to Albert and his team. Don't go to Sam. Albert seems to have a little more on the ball."

Ugh. Albert.

*****

"Diane, I'm holding in my hand a small box of chocolate bunnies."

Diane couldn't help but chuckle. Typical Dale. All the theories, letters, drug use and diaries from that poor girl and he focuses in on what is probably the most unimportant element but still gives it all of his attention.

"Looks to be milk chocolate, Diane. Given the lack of oxidation on the chocolate it's doubtful that it is from last Easter. Maybe the local drug store stocked their Easter supplies early."

She laughed out loud again, getting a weird look from a couple of agents passing by. She stifled another chuckle but it didn't help. Of course it was only a few minutes later she could sense that feeling of dread and fear coming in again.

"Diane, it's four-ten in the afternoon at the scene of the crime-"

It wasn't until Dale was almost finished that Diane realized she had stopped typing and had to rewind to capture what he said.

"At the base of the mound of dirt is a torn piece of newsprint written with the words, which apper to be in blood, fire walk with me."

After tapes like these, Diane would normally go home and open a bottle of wine and turn on something funny or silly on television. Usually it was something funny or silly and the wine was just an addition to these types of days.

After a day like that at the bureau, she needed something like that.

*****

Today was different.

"Diane, my recorder is on the table. I'm unable to reach it at this time. I can only hope that I inadvertently pressed the voice activation button."

Today there was a note with the small little tape in the FedEx package. It had warned her that the contents might be distressing but that in the end, Agent Dale Cooper was alive and well.

"I'm lying on the floor of my room. I've been shot."

While the note was a polite way of notifying her what had happened, it still didn't stop Diane feel the room grow cold and the hairs on her neck from standing up on end.

"All things considered, being shot is not as bad as I always thought it might be. As long as you can keep the fear from your mind. But I guess you can say that about almost anything in life."

She had stopped typing again.

She restarted the tape and forced herself to transcribe it all once again, trying to keep the fear from her mind.

It didn't work.

She picked up a bottle of wine on the the way home from worked and watched an epsiode of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. After that the TV was a bit of a blur. She prayed she wouldn't have any nightmares that night.

*****

"Diane, 10:03 am, Great Northern Hotel. Sheriff Truman and I have just been with the one-armed man or what's left of him. In another time, another culture he may have been a seer, a shaolin priest. In our world he's a shoe salesman and lives among the shadows." 

Leave it to Agent Cooper to make a shoe salesman sound like a poet.

"Diane, its 11:05 pm, I'm in the room at the Great Northern Hotel. There's not a star in the sky tonight. Ben Horne is in custody. The trail narrows Diane. I'm very close but the last few steps are always the darkest and most difficult."

Diane held her breath. She could only hope this case would be at an end. That Agent Cooper would be reassigned. Hopefully to somewhere normal where deranged killers didn't exist.

*****

"Diane, I am standing at the window of my room at the Great Northern, looking down at the wedding of Dougie Milford and his youthful bride."

Of course he hadn't left. Laura Palmer's killer was found and committed suicide... Or Bob killed his host or -Good grief. And now Agent Cooper was under investigation and-

She stopped herself and restarted the tape.

Windom Earle.

She had thought she would never have to type out that name again.

******  
"I know the answer is in that crude etching and I am now convinced that Windom Earle is searching for the same thing we are, and for diametrically opposite reasons. If I'm correct in my assumptions about the power of that unholy place... God help us if he gets there first."

Diane could feel the fear creeping in again. She stopped the tape player so she could take a moment to clear her head. She walked around the floor, got herself a cup of coffee and chatted with Abigail in accounting about her twins. It was a good thirty minutes before she sat back down and popped in the new tape.

"Diane, it's 3:30 PM. Long day. I'm not sure I could even begin to tell you the experience I just had."

She sighed and started her transcription. Maybe now this would blow over and everything would be just fine.

And that was when she realized that somewhere in his rambling about the black lodge, giants, little men, his eggs and orange juice, Agent Cooper had stopped talking in mid-sentence. She was about to check the tape when he started talking again.

"Hello. Di-ane."

The voice was different somehow. It was Dale but it wasn't Dale. She could sense that feeling of dread coming up from the center of her being. 

"How's Annie?"

She should have stopped the tape player right then.

"Through the darkness of future's past, The magician longs to see."

What was it that Dale said? Keep the fear from your mind?

"One chants out between two worlds... Fire... walk with me."

She never stopped the tape player. She was running down the hall screaming for Bureau Chief Gordon Cole.

The next day she put in her resignation.

*****

For the next twenty five years, Diane had nothing to do with the Bureau. She got a job as an executive assistant at an insurance company where all she had to deal with was managing meeting schedules, minor errands, expense reports, etc. Most days she didn't even think about the FBI or Special Agent Dale Cooper. Every once in a while she'd see a news report and need a second glass of wine whenever the body of a girl was shown on the screen.

But it was quiet. And there weren't any nightmares. Not anymore.

So when the phone rang at dinner she didn't give a thought to ignoring it. If she knew who was on the other line, she wouldn't have picked it up.

"DIANE? IS THAT YOU? SPEAK UP! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

Out of reflex she pulled her phone back a couple of inches from her ear. "Mr. Cole?"

"I NEED YOUR HELP, DIANE! MORE SPECIFICALLY: HE NEEDS YOUR HELP!"

She closed her eyes. She knew who he was talking about. "I don't know."

"WHAT? DID YOU SAY SOMETHING? LOOK DIANE, IT HAS TO BE YOU! YOU KNOW HOW HE IS! I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE AND I WON'T BLAME YOU ONE BIT IF-"

Somewhere in all the shouting she took a deep breath. What came out of her surprised her.

*****

"Diane, it's February 24th, 2017. As much as I hate to say this: it's happening again."

It was a different set up now. Digital technology. Files sent directly from his iPhone to a secured FBI server. There was even an application that could immediately transcribe these audio files but...

Well, that wouldn't work for Agent Cooper. There had to be a person sitting and listening to those files. Someone to whom his thoughts resonated. And for one reason or another, it had to be her.

"It's been a long time. It's good to know that you're still there. You don't know how much that means to me. Let's get started shall we?"

She couldn't help but smile. Even after what happened. It was like a part of her had been missing for twenty five years.

"Diane, I'm holding in my hands a box of jelly donuts. Twenty two of them to be precise. Most of them appear to be raspberry but the one in the upper left hand corner appears to be grape. All of them have powdered sugar sprinkled generously on top except for the grape one, Diane. It's frosted. It makes me wonder what if that donut somehow feels the isolation. Two donuts are missing Diane. I can see the slight discoloration where they sat at the bottom of the box. No indication of whether they were grape or raspberry."

She closed her eyes and began to type. Maybe this time everything would turn out right.


	2. Josie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life didn't end for Josie after she "died".

Josie

Eckhardt was dead. And to the rest of the world so was Josie but she was not. She was still screaming. Silently. Frozen in place. Locked away.

Eventually everyone left the room. Agent Cooper virtually carried Harry away. He was hunched over, crying in anguish. She shouted for him, trying to cry out apologies but she wasn't heard.

When the deputies and the county morgue arrived she screamed at Hawk and Andy, trying to be heard. They did not.

Eventually the room was empty, tape on the door saying it was a crime scene. When that came down, cleaners arrived cleaning up everything, making everything bright and clean again. Trying to make the room clean and remove the memory that happened.

The memory never left. Josie was always there. She shouted at the cleaners, pleaded at any guests who came into her room but no one ever answered. Occasionally an old man who worked at the hotel would come into the room and touch the nightstand sympathetically. He would never respond to her. Once and a great while a guest would hear her. They never lasted long in the room and left the hotel quickly, never responding to Josie's pleas for help.

One day the Great Northern was renovated. Updated to keep up with the style and needs of the guests and Josie was left outside with all the other discarded furniture. It had been over fifteen years at that point and she had almost given up. She ended up in a thrift shop on the other side of town where she was left to sit, ignored by customers looking for a deal. She always called out and as always ignored.

Until the one day an old woman with round glasses entered the store. The woman stopped when Josie called out to her. She walked over when Josie pleaded for her to listen. She even patted the top of the end table when Josie asked if she could hear her.

"There. Shhh. Quiet now," the lady said. "One day I will tell your story and what you have seen and done. Be patient."

The lady the put the log down on top of the end table where Josie had been imprisoned for so long and went to find the proprietor. She was purchased that day and taken home.

It would be ten more years before her story could be told.

But Josie could be heard now. And she could be patient.


	3. Maddy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Maddy says goodbye to James, she reflects on her relationship with Laura

Maddy smiled wistfully as she watched James ride off on his motorcycle. She had said her goodbyes and now it was time to leave Twin Peaks. She had come for Laura's funeral and somehow... somehow everything had become twisted. 

She had told James that she and Laura were connected somehow. It seemed the right thing to say, but now after spending time in Twin Peaks she wondered if that was for real. For every time Laura said she was thinking the same thing as Maddy, was she being truthful? 

Did their connection to each other really end at the physical resemblance?

Laura Palmer seemed to have a dream life on the surface. Something Maddy wished she had. Maddy was never the homecoming queen and didn't date the star football player. Laura always looked glamorous while Maddy had glasses and felt shy. Shy enough to bond with her younger cousin and wish they could trade places. Which they had done from time to time. Laura would put on Maddy's glasses and go in the corner to read while Maddy would pretend to be her.

Her Uncle Leland would laugh at the when they did this. Then he'd start singing the theme to the Patty Duke Show. "They look alike, They laugh alike..."

But it wasn't until after Laura's death that Maddy realized that they truly weren't alike. And that the connection she pretended and claimed to have with Laura wasn't really there. She would always love and cherish her cousin... but the truth of the matter was that what Laura did with Maddy was an act. And that was the really sad part of Laura's death.

That Maddy never truly knew her cousin that she adored.

She stood up and started to walk to her Uncle and Aunt's house. Soon she would be going home and she could put the drama of Twin Peaks behind her. She would go home. Donna and James could be together and Maddy would be back in her normal life.

She took a deep breath and sighed happily. Everything was going to be just fine.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laura Palmer goes on a picnic.

Laura's life usuaully felt split in two. No moreso than today. The night before she had been doing cocaine with Leo and Jacques and this morning she had done an entire round of meals on wheels and was now going on... a picnic.

She still felt hungover but put on a smile for Donna as they drove out to meet James. James. How weird it was that he seemed to be the sweetest soul. His leather jacket and motorcycle always made her think he was a bad boy and that a fling with him would help satisfy... well help satisfy the things she did when she wasn't trying to think of BOB.

But instead it helped her more than she thought. The fake facade when she was with Donna and James almost felt real. The picnic in the woods was Donna's idea. A away for her to spend time with Laura and in turn time for Laura to spend time with James. Laura wasn't an idiot. She knew Donna had a thing for James. She could tell by the way she laughed harder than she did when she was with Mike. She almost glowed whenever James paid her a compliment.

And poor clueless, James. He'd fall for Donna in a second if Laura wasn't around.

The three of them spent the afternoon laughing and eating. James had brought an old FM portable radio and somehow found a classic rock station in the middle of nowhere. It was so nice. So sweet. 

And for once Laura didn't feel like she was faking it when she smiled. She laughed when she got up on her feet and made Donna dance with her to the music. Donna was laughing too. James was taping it all and said they belonged on stage which made them laugh even more.

Laura looked at James and smiled a real smile. Is this what love felt like?

Eventually they both had to go. Donna had to get back in time for dinner and James had a shift at the gas station. The feeling of "nice" and "sweet" began to fade. Now it all just felt plastic and cheap.

She went home. And faked a smile all throughout dinner for Mom and Dad. It was Asparagus again. Ugh.

By the time she climbed the steps to her room she felt like she wanted to scream. She did a line of coke and called Leo. Was there going to be another party tonight?

This... this is what she needed now.


End file.
